Electrical connectors, useful in electrical power wiring, have previously employed screw contacts for effecting electrical connections. The connectors may be somewhat inconvenient to use, requiring the following steps to be performed:                1. Stripping of insulation from end portions of wires;        2. Inserting stripped end portions of the wires into receiving openings of the connector; and        3. Screwing down of screws of the connector in order to make the connections.        
Performing the above-described steps to install an electrical connector may be labour intensive, and inconvenient.
Electrical connectors may not have previously included means for controlling their operation. It may be difficult to control the operation of the individual connectors in a plurality of such connectors coupled together in series.
Insulation displacement contacts may be formed from a contact element which is bifurcated so as to define two opposed contact portions separated by a slot into which an insulated wire may be pressed so that edges of the contact portions engage and displace the insulation and such that the contact portions resiliently engage and make electrical connection with the conductor of the wire. Such a contact is described in, for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,452,502 and 4,405,187.
While, in some cases, making electrical connection to a single wire in the above way is all that is necessary, occasions arise where it would be useful to make connection to more than one wire by inserting the wires, one after the other, into the slot. With a carefully designed contact it may be possible to make connections in this way to two wires, but it is difficult to make effective connections to several wires. This arises because, during the process of introducing a first wire into the slot, the contact portions are resiliently deformed, such that the gap between them is to some extent increased. The resultant increase in slot width may still permit an adequate connection to be made to a second wire when inserted into the slot. However, the increased slot width may even be such that the contact portions fail to properly pierce the insulation, or it may otherwise leave the second wire unreliably gripped. This problem becomes worse as more wires are inserted.
The above problem is alleviated in Krone LSA-PLUS connectors by arranging that the contact portions are torsionally twisted during insertion of the wires. That is, the wires are introduced into the slot with their directions of extent arranged at an angle of about 45 degrees to the side to side direction of the slot, so that insertion of the wires tends to deflect contacting edges of the respective contact portions outwardly away from each other, in opposite directions relative to the general plane of the contact. In that case, it is possible to achieve good connection to two wires but even in this construction more than two wires may not be adequately accommodated.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,484 also describes a particular form of contact that is indicated as being able to terminate more than a single conductor. This is however complicated in form.
It is generally desirable to overcome or ameliorate one or more of the above-described difficulties, or to at least provide a useful alternative.